Marketing Advice for Our Affiliates

By Michael T. Robinson

Quick start marketing tips, for those in a hurry to make money:

To earn the most money you will want to paste your affiliate links:

• In or near the very first paragraph on the page
• Above the fold
• In the center of the page rather than the left or right columns

Basically the higher up on the page, the more money you will make.

Why should you listen to us about online marketing?

We've been offering career tests, career counseling and other related career products online since 1998.

We don't know everything there is to know about online marketing, but we do know a few things that work.

In fact, Google did a case study on CareerPlanner in 2009 and another in 2011.

Actually, first Google gave us some training. Then they did the case study.

Yes, that's right. CareerPlanner.com Inc. is big enough on the web that Google actually called us and offered to help. How cool is that!

When our advertising revenue finally met Google's standards they invited us to the Google Plex Headquarters in Mountainview, California to do the interview for the case study.

Google has actually been using CareerPlanner.com as an example in their AdSense training sessions which they hold in places like London, New York, San Francisco, LA, etc.

So I will tell you what I learned from Google and what I know works best when selling career tests and such.

However, if you have some tips or ideas for me, I would love to hear them. Please call or write. I am always excited to learn better ways of marketing.

The rest of this page will show you where to place your links to CareerPlanner.com to achieve the highest click through rate (CTR) and conversion rate.

What works best when it comes to selling products online?

We've tried all sorts of ways to sell our products:

• Banner ads
• Contests
• Discounts

But what works best are simple text based ads and links, that are embedded in the text of your content. Ads that look a lot like Google ads work the best.

After all, Google makes billions running ads. They must know something.

Skip the banner ads.

As much as I love them, banner ads with fancy graphics usually don't work well. We've run tests. I've put the most attractive banner ads on our pages only to have zero click through's.

By banner ads I mean those ~90 px by ~480 px horizontal rectangles you see on the tops of everybody's web pages.

Putting a banner ad at the top of your page, whether it's at the same level as your logo, or just below is usually a complete waste of your valuable space. Plus it will make your site look cheap and sleazy.

The main use of banner ads is that companies use them to build up brand awareness and brand image. Companies that run banner ads do not expect people to click on them, so they do not work for our purpose.

Position Your Ads (links to us) To Make the Most Money

The absolute best position for a text link to our products is above the fold, within the first paragraph of your content. See diagram below:

Ads on the left side of your page, it they are above the fold will do OK. Ads on the right side of your page are only minimally effective but are better than nothing.

Center Column, Above The Fold, Embedded in Your Content

In case you are new to publishing, the term "Above the Fold" is absolutely critical.

In a traditional printed newspaper, the fold is 1/2 way down the page where they fold the paper in half.

On a web page, the fold is determined by the user's monitor. "Above the Fold" is the amount of web page you can see without scrolling down.

The center column, "Above the Fold" real estate is worth much more than left and right columns.

The second best location for a text ad is in the left column,also above the fold.

Ads in the top portion of the right column are the third best location.

The value of your page real estate drops off the further you are below the fold.

Here is some real data about the value of your web page real estate.

Let's say you make $1000 from running text ads in the prime position i.e. center column, above the fold, embedded in your text content. Here is the amount the same text ad would earn in the other two positions:

Click here for the actual Links / Text Ads to our products

Traffic

Once you have your affiliate links in place, you need to generate a lot of web traffic.

So how do you do that? Well, I am sure you have heard this many times before. "Content" is king. To get a lot of web traffic, you need great content that people really want to see.

Great content means you either have a few very high quality, super popular web pages, or you have a lot of average quality pages.

I once heard of a site that some guy built as a joke. Apparently the content was hilarious. He only had a few pages but it was so popular he was able to quit his day job and earn a living ny displaying Google AdSense ads on his site. But having a hit like that is hard to do.

I suggest that you write a new web page everyday if you can. Or at least, write a few pages a week. Then make sure you can easily find this content, either from your home page or a secondary page.

We have one article that I wrote back in 2000 that still brings in 30,000 visitors per month.

So if you want a lot of traffic, I would start with creating great content. That should be your top priority. Write about something you know about.

Also, as a personal preference, I create web pages not BLOGs. I tried a blog. It didn't help traffic. On most blogs, it's hard to find the content you want. I find web sites and web pages much easier to navigate.

What about "Linking" for Traffic

I'm sure you have heard of various linking strategies. This is where you ask other web sites to link to you. That will definitely help. However...

It will work real well if you get a link from a high traffic site that is in a similar niche as your site.

Personally, I am afraid that most linking may some day be looked upon as a scam, or more likely SPAM. At CareerPlanner, we get about 5 requests a day from sites wanting us to link to them. Many of these sites have nothing to do with Careers and Jobs.

Most of the time I just delete the requests (sorry). Sometimes I actually look at the site they want me to link to. Most of the time it's a tiny start-up site with no traffic and minimal content. So why would I link to them?

Sorry, I'm guessing the other large web sites do the same. So we rarely link to other sites, unless of course they offer some really unique content. Only then do we link.

We also get offers from companies who will build up links to us for a price. That is very dangerous, and I would avoid it. Someday that will backfire and the search engines will blacklist your site.

By the way, in the past I did personally request a link from some major career web sites. In most cases I actually spoke to the owner. Just sending an email to request a link is a waste of your time.

Today, the traffic from all of the incoming links we have at CareerPlanner equals the traffic that is coming from that one article I mentioned.

So what does that tell you? If you want traffic, write a new web page or article everyday. The linking will someday be considered SPAM.

Summary

For maximum click through's and thus maximum affiliate revenue, place links to CareerPlanner above the fold, in the center of the page.

If you can't do that, paste the links in your left column as high up as possible.

Links in your right column will not be very effective.

For maximum traffic, create great content first before you spend time with linking strategies.

Best of luck with your internet marketing,

Michael T. Robinson
President and Founder
CareerPlanner.com